Phishing is a term used to describe deceptive practices on the Internet to gain personal information such as social security numbers and credit card numbers. A typical phishing attack involves sending a spoof e-mail to a recipient. The spoof e-mail is made to look like an official e-mail from a trusted company. The spoof e-mail may state that the recipient needs to verify some personal information. The spoof e-mail may ask the recipient to enter the personal information in the e-mail and click a submit button, or to go to a computer site made to look like the trusted company's site and enter the personal information.
Companies have attempted to mitigate phishing attacks by notifying their customers that they will never ask for personal information in an e-mail. Toolbars have been created for use inside Web browsers to indicate if someone has visited a spoofed Web site. These toolbars are limited to Web sites owned by the toolbar creator such as eBay® and PayPal®.
Business activity monitoring is a set of tools that monitor certain transactions processed by a computer system and create alerts based thereon. For example, a business activity monitoring system may alert a company official if order volume being sent through the company's computer system falls below a particular threshold. This alert potentially indicates a malfunction of the company's computer system.